Kosher Press In Your Inbox

Leftist Brazilian President Rousseff re-elected with narrow margin

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has been re-elected to a second term to lead the world’s fifth-largest nation.

Official results released Sunday by Brazil’s top electoral court show that the left-leaning Rousseff beat opposition contender Aecio Neves.

With 98 percent of the vote counted, Rousseff, 66, of the Workers’ Party (PT), had won 51.5 percent of the ballots. There are not enough outstanding votes left to be counted to allow her rival to catch up with her.

Rousseff will begin another four-year term on January 1, 2015. By the end of her second term the PT will have served 16 consecutive years.

Since assuming power in 2003, the PT have enacted expansive social programs that have helped pull millions of Brazilians out of poverty and into the middle class